The Wait Is Over

Never-before-seen photo of my maternal grandparents
on their wedding day in 1920(?) in Poland:
Emma Schmidt and Bruno Lohse

My American Cousin

A person I've never met and still would not be able to pick out of a crowd e-mailed me this past week. She and her dad and her uncle match a portion of my DNA, which I have made available for all to see on 23andMe.

She thought we might be related, so she asked for some information.

I gave her what I knew of my mother's father, the deeply mysterious Bruno Lohse, who, other than a notice of his death in the paper and a record of his son Alfred being wounded at Dieppe, had left no trace of his tenure on the planet that I could find.

She sent me some photos, including the ones above and below, showing the members of a comfortable-looking bourgeois family. According to her, the Lohses had a textile factory, destroyed in WWI, in Alexandroff, Poland.

Bruno had five siblings. He was the youngest. His oldest brother, Reinhold, landed in Ellis Island, with a new name - Loos - in 1903 when he was 23 years old. Reinhold was my contact's great-grandfather. He was twelve years older than Bruno.

Bruce's Last Day On The Job

Bruce's stellar career came to an end on Thursday June 28, after 35 years, 7 months and 22 days at the Canadian Tax Foundation.

Holy cow. Bruce and I have been together for a long time.

Doug Ford's First Day On The Job 
  
I get ridiculous pleasure from being right about how some political decisions turn out. Amid the massive cloud of speculation around Doug Ford's cabinet, I had said that Vic Fideli would likely get a big, shiny portfolio like Minister of Finance.

I was right.

I'd like to make another prediction: the massive cost in political capital and actual dollars of cancelling cap and trade will be Ford's signal out-of-the-gate mistake.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Canada Day!

Karen
  

Social License

One of 1,864: off shore from Kingston, a Thousand Island

Once in Toronto after my long weekend in Winnipeg, I hopped on a train to Kingston to the Duncan Gordon Conference Centre, which I blogged about four years ago.

In 2014, I attended a two-week course there, billed as "executive training." Readers may recall that all I got from that experience was a case of shingles.  

This week, I went to CAMPUT's intensive energy regulation course for members and staff of energy panels across the country (for the benefit of subscribers, those include the British Columbia Utilities Commission, the Manitoba Public Utilities Board and the Ontario Energy Board). 

The course has been held every year for the past fourteen years. I went because one of my managers told me it would be a quick way to understand how energy policy gets implemented.

He was right. The course was terrific. My one regret is that I missed the first day because of the long commute from Winnipeg.

Shy

While I am glad not to be at the Ministry of the Environment - especially since the election - I struggle with the transition to my new role. 

I don't know anybody in the energy sector. After twenty years in the environment gig, I could walk into a room, no matter how big, and know just about everyone in it. I used to be the person who went around to the newbies and introduced myself to make them feel a bit more at home. Now I'm the one looking for just one familiar face - just one - so I can be spared the agony of being alone in a sea of strangers. 

I am fundamentally an introverted person. Talking to strangers is something I've learned to do, not love to do. So this past week was a lot of work. I spent most of my spare time in my room recharging the batteries in my devices and in my head. 

Madame Chair

Thursday was "moot court" day at the course. We had to pretend to hold a hearing. The issue was whether or not TransCanada Pipelines could recover the costs of its move from Toronto to swanky offices in Calgary from the "rate payer", which is to say its customers - people like you and me.

We were separated into groups representing the different parties before the National Energy Board. I was in the group representing the Board itself. Our group had to pick our roles. Three were to be the panel. Three were to be board counsel. I wanted to be on the panel and said so. Because I volunteered so quickly, my group nominated me to be the chair of the panel. 

At that point, I became "Madame Chair." The low stakes of our play acting made this funny, and we riffed on the joke for the rest of the course, even as I bade farewell to some folks from the Ontario Energy Board when our train arrived in Toronto on Friday afternoon.

I've had worse nicknames.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Monumental

Kim at the foot of the RCAF monument, Waterfront Drive, Winnipeg

It's not that I ignore infrastructure in Toronto. I just get so used to seeing it day after day after day that it fades from my notice.

In a fresh environment, I am more aware of the effort that's been made to make a space something notable, as with Waterfront Drive in Winnipeg. 

Kim and Carol ham it up in front of the inukshuk in Lily's Garden, Waterfront Drive.

There are multiple trails and spots of interest along Winnipeg's showcase avenue, and a ball park, children's playgrounds, the suspension pedestrian bridge to St. Boniface - with the Forks historical site on the one end and Fort Douglas Park at the other. 

Graffiti on a big old train trellis

The suspension bridge

Bugs on the bridge 

We missed one monument. 

A tragic boating accident in 1963 took the lives of my mother's brother - my Uncle Ernie - and his youngest son - my cousin Robbie.

They were buried in Elmwood cemetery, a four minute drive (or twenty minute walk) from our hotel. 

The cemetery's grave search function on its web site gave us the section and plot number. After about half an hour of searching and kicking clean the surfaces of overgrown grave markers, we ascertained the spot where they must be, although no stone was there.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Human Rights

Mahatma and me: Kim, who took this picture,
wouldn't let me make bunny ears behind his bronze head.

Our major stop today - besides the Scots Memorial by the Red River and the obligatory stroll through the Forks Market - was the vast, impressive, bunker-like, window-clad corkscrew that is the Human Rights Museum.

The exterior owes a lot to Gehry. The entry is very like the way into a bomb shelter. 

Inside, it's a Piranesi prison.

Two Perspectives 

The museum from our hotel:

Our hotel from the museum:

There Really is a Scots Monument

The Last Thing I Expected to See in A Museum

That would be a prominent picture of someone I knew in a significant moment in the history of human rights in Canada:

This is Anne Mitchell. I worked for her when she was the Executive Director of the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy. I thought her background was in international development; I had no idea she was an anti-apartheid crusader in Canada. 

And here's the whole photo: Anne and Joe Clark and Margaret Trudeau(?).

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Winnipeggers

In our hotel: welcoming bouquets, one for each of us, from cousin Paul

Two of my sisters, the eldest and the youngest, and I are in Winnipeg for the first time in at least a decade.

Kim and Carol rocking Lennard Taylor on the Cibo patio

We're here to visit our cousins Paul and Susan, the youngest son and oldest daughter of my mother's second oldest sister and second oldest brother, respectively. 

Family can get a little confusing.

We're staying at a newish hotel - the Mere - by the Red River, close to the Forks and the Human Rights Museum.

Over an Italian-wedding-scale meal featuring something from every part of the Cibo menu (do try the pickerel fritto; avoid the salmon and dill pizza), we sorted out some of the intricacies of the family history.

We also made some plans. 

Stay tuned.

Carol, cousin Paul, cousin Susan, Kim

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Little Help

Fledgling robin waiting to be fed, my back yard.

I've had better weeks: ones that left me feeling better than I feel right now. Weeks where no one famous who was almost exactly my age died.* Where no former boss or colleague died.** And where no sloganeering neophyte of undetectable talent and unclear intentions became the Premier-designate of the province.

These were all unfortunate; the last being possibly the most impactful. 

Bruce and I talked about our new circumstances as we walked together on Friday morning, me on my way to work, Bruce on his way to the bus station to go visit his dad. 

Bruce, trying to be positive, said that we had survived the tenures of other conservative ideologues like Brian Mulroney, Mike Harris and Stephen Harper, so we could likely weather the next four to eight years. 

He is right that we are better situated than many others, but, I said to Bruce, who retires at the end of this month, "When all those other guys were in power, we were less vulnerable than we are now. Our income was steady or growing; we were younger ..."

Then we agreed - and I spent the whole day Friday saying to my staff - "we'll just have to see what happens." 

The Liberals' good intentions didn't keep them from being ineffectual, so there's hope. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen 

* Anthony Bourdain.

** My former boss, Rob Fleming, died suddenly from an aneurysm on Wednesday morning. He'd retired last October. And I learned on Friday of the death of Christopher Wilson. I'd known Christopher, a Canadian-born American citizen who worked for the Lung Association, from my air quality work over the past decade.

March 2017. That's Christopher, the guy with the grey beard and impressive head of hair, gazing off into the distance in Ottawa, the night before a multi-stakeholder working group agreed on a proposal for a new standard for sulphur dioxide emissions in Canada.

Perfect

Found only in the Allan Gardens: red-tailed black squirrel

About six years ago, we ended our contractual relationship - we thought amicably - with Dave our cleaning guy. Evidently Dave thought differently. He would not return our key.

Without further ado, we changed our locks. We opted for top-of-the-line technology that would let us keep the same lock but change the key up to four times. We had these installed on the basement, back and front doors. 

The back and basement doors have never given us trouble, but because it is most fiercely exposed to the elements and because the door hangs a bit crooked in its frame, we have had to call in service on the front door lock two or three times in the past six years.

Most recently, when I turned the key in the lock on Monday, I heard a "bang" on the other side of the door. The deadbolt knob had slipped off its peg. It looked like it had lost its set screw and I couldn't find that anywhere.

So I called the lock company.

A nice young woman, whose name I learned was Courtney, answered the phone. I gave her my name and explained my situation.

"Perfect," she said. "We can get Vlad out today."

Assuming Vlad was the repair technician, I quickly added that Friday would be better.

"Perfect," she said.

I gave her my address.

"Perfect," she said. "What's your phone number?"

I gave her my number.

"Perfect," she said.

I found all this positive feedback encouraging. 

Courtney asked when would be the best time for Vlad to come by. I explained Bruce would be home all day, so, whenever.

"Perfect," said Courtney. "But when?"

I threw out my opening bid. "9:00 a.m.?"

9:00 a.m. was not perfect. The earliest Vlad could show up was 11:00 a.m.

"That will work," I said.

"Perfect," said Courtney.

There was more to the conversation, but you get the picture. 

I have remarked in other posts how once high-calibre words such as icon, avatar and war have been, through overuse and lazy locution, upended and drained of meaning. 

"Perfect" could be the next candidate, except that it has never meant anything.

I'm more worried about another overused, once high-calibre word, the one that now describes everything from a community of similarly-qualified professionals, to a collection of factories, to a sector of the economy, to any kind of system, to the world as we know it: "ecosystem."

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

P.S. Vlad came and fixed the lock, at 11:00 a.m. as promised. The set screw was not "lost." Rather, it is permanently set within the deadbolt knob, but you need a special, tiny Allen key to turn it when it comes loose. After reattaching the knob, and charging Bruce $150.00, Vlad gave us our very own tiny Allen key. 

Perfect.